Defending the Dignity of All Human Life

As someone who was pro-choice for her entire teenage career and into her young adult life, with that conviction only growing in fervency as she learned feminist political ideology, I can testify that most within the movement do not know the truth of its roots: the early feminists were pro-life.

“Without known exception, our feminist foremothers opposed abortion and sought to address the root causes that drive women to abortion” – Feminists for Life.

Susan B. Anthony, a radical feminist activist, Alice Paul, who drafted the primary version of the Equal Rights Amendment, and Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States, among many others, all considered abortion to be a means of exploiting both mother and child.

I had always assumed I had to choose between being pro-life and being a feminist. Luckily, I am not the only female out there who felt caught within this trap. As I struggled between wanting to advance the rights of women, and wanting to protect the life of the unborn, I found The New Wave Feminist movement. It seeks to dignify what they call a ‘consistent life ethic’; that is to protect life against violence from the earliest moments of our existence to our natural death. They, like the early feminists, see the foetus as the most vulnerable member of the human family. They see the link between the oppressive power that women were under when they did not have rights, and that same power we now wield over the unborn. Instead of accepting that, they want to change the discourse to say to women that they can do it, they are strong enough, and we will help you.

“Our liberation cannot be bought with the blood of our children” – New Wave Feminists.

Once you understand the undeniable humanity of the unborn, all other arguments come down to factors such as age, ability, class and even gender. As someone who believes feminism should be intersectional – that is to recognise the different forces of oppression that intersect with gender and disempower women to differing degrees – this strikes a chord. How can I claim to be an intersectional feminist, and ignore the classist, ableist, sexist underpinnings of the abortion industry? How can I support the killing of any human being based on how old it is, whether it has all its functions or not, or the socioeconomic circumstances in which it might live?

Today is International Women’s Day. In Canada, there are no laws preventing abortion under any circumstances – this includes the right of a woman to abort her child because it is a girl. I do not feel like I can celebrate this day in a country where females are still being killed because they are female. The evidence that this is happening makes apathy just not good enough. If you do not oppose sex-selective abortions, you are complicit in their occurrence.

We will never achieve the respect we deserve, we will never have enough resources for crisis pregnancies, or enough structural changes to accommodate the life-changing prospect of raising a child generally, if we treat abortion like the solution to a problem. To do so ignores the reality that it is the cause of many problems, and a solution to none. Today I advocate for a law to protect our unborn girls from gendercide, and a change in the way we, as a society, provide support for pregnant women.

Ultimately, our freedom is a farce if these two things do not work together, and we will never be truly free if the weakest among us do not have the right to live.

Today, for the second time in a few short months, the grass outside of the University of Victoria (UVic) library will be covered with 10,000 small pink and blue flags. Students who are members of a pro-life campus club at the University of Victoria will plant the flags and engage passers by in respectful dialogue regarding abortion and the human rights of the pre-born. Each flag represents 10 pre-born children who are aborted in Canada every year. Although statistics are difficult to confirm with certainty because two provinces censor all abortion information, there are approximately 100,000 abortions in Canada every year. That is the equivalent of about 5,000 classrooms filled with children.

“We believe that human rights are for all human beings. The intentional ending of human life through abortion presents an injustice that should not be happening 100,000 times a year in Canada,” said Cecilia Fillipone, the event organizer and President of Youth Protecting Youth.

Students will have resources available that have been provided by WeNeedaLAW.ca, a national campaign that focuses on building support for legislation that will bring Canada into line with other democracies around the world.

“The reality is, Canada is in an extreme position,” said Fillipone. “Since 1988, we have had zero legal protections for pre-born children. This legal void needs to be filled. Certainly we can find common ground by regulating late-term and sex-selective abortion.”

This is the second flag display that Youth Protecting Youth has been involved in since November. Their last event was vandalized by protestors who pulled up all the flags. Instead of defending the free expression of the pro-life students, campus security stood by while the protestors destroyed the flag display.

“The University was very accommodating and recognized that our event was improperly managed by security staff, resulting in vandalism by protestors. We are very thankful for their gracious response to our concerns,” said Fillipone. “When they offered to grant us another event permit for the spring semester we put plans in motion which have resulted in today’s flag display.”

Fillipone concluded by saying, “Universities are places where ideas ought to be debated. As young Canadians we should welcome opportunities to be challenged so we can formulate our own thoughts and worldview. The reality is, when Canadians are informed that there are no laws, a majority consistently say pre-born children should be protected, at some point, by the law.”

“Pro-life is only pro-birth. After that baby is born, you don’t do anything to look after their needs, and you don’t support them until they have an unplanned pregnancy. Your highest priority is the fetus, and nothing else.”

In the wake of the March for Life in the states, I heard statements of this kind very frequently. While it frustrated me endlessly to have someone try to distill my pro-life convictions to one issue, could I really blame them when abortion (and more recently, euthanasia) is the only issue that has a recognizable “pro-life” sticker slapped on to it? It seems that the two don’t just go hand in hand, but that pro-life is synonymous with anti-abortion, and that is all. However, when one stops to consider the pro-life ideology, it can’t stop at issues of birth. Living is the longest, most involved process any of us go through, so to be truly pro-life is to support the entire span of humanity throughout this journey.

So what does it mean for me to be pro-life for me, a student with limited resources, who can’t adopt or foster children yet, besides doing what I can to spread the truth about abortion and show women the better options available to them?

For me, it means carrying my organ donor card all the time, in case I’m hit on my bike- a fact which I know makes my loved ones uncomfortable, as my body will neither be mine nor theirs when I die.

It means being kind to the refugee family down the hall, and giving what I can financially to support bringing a family to Canada, doing what I can to help them re-establish their lives in a new country.

It means being especially kind to the irritable elderly man who I see at work every week, because I don’t know whether he’s irritable because he’s lonely, or if I’m the only positive interaction he’s had today.

It means being open to adoption down the road, a conversation I’m already having in planning my future.

It means supporting mental health initiatives on my campus and being involved in their planning and implementation, so that no one feels isolated because of their mental health and everyone has access to resources that allow them to support themselves and live fulfilling lives.

It also means learning about suicide intervention so that if the time comes, I can help someone ease off that dangerous ledge.

It means reaching out to communities who feel unheard so that, even if I can’t do anything, they aren’t alone. I have been lucky enough to spend time in a First Nations community on several occasions, as a representative of the Catholic Church, to hear their stories and experiences. All I was there to do was listen, and the bravery shown in their sharing, and the trust shown in letting me spend time with their youth, has been heroic.

It means giving my time so that everyone knows that their life has inherent value, independent of their age, ability, health (both physical and mental), gender, race, beliefs, et cetera et cetera.

None of this is comfortable stuff. To quote Pope Benedict XVI, “the world promises you comfort, but you were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness.” All these uncomfortable actions may be small in the moment, but they shed light on the unfathomable greatness of human life. It demands greater respect, which extends to every human life.

I know sometimes the pro-life issue seems boiled down to a few issues- those which are heard most often because of their urgency. But the whole mindset is wrapped up in those two little words. To be for life. To be open the miracle that is life itself.

One evening, I was on my way home from work when I decided to talk to my brother while walking in the dark. Because of our conflicting schedules, we seldom get a chance to talk to each other. That night, it turned out that I was calling him at the most inopportune time. He was at a friend’s house and they were having a conversation about the Abortion Awareness Project which UBC Lifeline hosted on their university campus this past November.

For those who don’t know, the Abortion Awareness Project is a visual display composed of 4×8-foot (or 6×13-foot) billboards.

I didn’t know this at the time, but my phone call had interrupted their conversation on abortion. When my brother and I finally got around to chatting with each other, he had confessed that he did not know what to say to his friends. Since he doesn’t discuss the issue of abortion often, he was left completely speechless.

Unless someone initiates the topic, the issue of abortion is rarely brought up in conversations by itself. It’s seldom a topic which is had over water coolers at work, unless it was headlining the 6 o’clock news the night before. I must admit that even I am guilty of not talking about it with my peers in class unless there’s an event which would encourage me to.

The issue of abortion is a very heavy topic to discuss intellectually, emotionally, and politically. When one doesn’t bring it up in conversation often, it is easy to feel rusty in conveying the embryology or speak to the human rights a preborn child has. It can be intimidating and therefore easy to fall into silence.

However, when we live in one of three countries in the world, including China and North Korea, which does not have any laws regulating abortion and therefore making it permissible throughout all nine months of pregnancy, shouldn’t we be having these kinds of conversations more often? Shouldn’t we be speaking on behalf of the 300 children who are victims of abortion every single day? If there are many Canadians unaware of this current situation, which many are, isn’t this enough of a reason to talk about it more?

While it most certainly helps when the pro-life movement has various strategies to initiate and encourage conversations on the issue, we don’t have to wait for these conversations to come to us or for it to just happen. Recently, I was reminded that we should make it our goal to have at least 3 of these conversations per week among my peers.

When we choose not to talk about it as frequently as we should, it becomes a lot easier to choose not to say anything out of fear. However, any conversation is a fruitful conversation because you know that you were able to do and say everything you could. Who knows, maybe the conversation becomes the pebble in their shoe, an issue that he or she starts to think more and more about because they were invited into a conversation that they had never spoken or thought of before.

So, the next time you have a conversation with your friend or classmate on the issue of abortion, what will you do?

Almost a month after the March for Life in Washington, I am still thinking about the theme from this year’s March. Before I get into that, however, here’s a little history lesson about the March for Life in Washington. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from the pro-life movement, it’s that we, as pro-lifers, must always remember how we came to where we are today.

Forty-two years ago, on January 22nd, 1973, the US Supreme Court issued its decision in favour of Roe in the infamous court case Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court ruled 7–2 that a right to privacy under the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment extended to a woman’s decision to have an abortion, but that this right must be balanced against the state’s two legitimate interests in regulating abortions: protecting women’s health and protecting the potentiality of human life.[1] Since then, according to the Guttmacher Institute (AGI), more than 53 million legal abortions occurred in the United States.

So, every year, on the anniversary of this U.S. Supreme Court Decision, hundreds of thousands of people march for life in Washington, DC. This year, even in the midst of an impending blizzard, people from across America realize the gravity of the issue and want their politicians to know that the death of another human being due to abortion is an issue that must be addressed. This brings me to the reason why I am writing this blog. This year the theme for the March was: “Pro-life and Pro-woman go hand-in-hand.” This theme struck a chord with me. It’s something that I’ve always thought about.

Almost every time I do activism, whether it’s on or off campus, I am told that because I am pro-life, I am not pro-woman. That is the furthest from the truth you could get. First, as a woman, I believe that all women, no matter what age, ability, or circumstance they are in deserve to be treated equally among their peers, whether or not they are in the womb. More importantly, I believe that every human, no matter what age, ability, or circumstance, belonging to the human family is entitled to human rights.

Furthermore, being pro-life recognizes that there are two lives at stake when abortion is involved: the pre-born child AND the mother. As pro-lifers, we must always remember this because to recognize one, but not the other would not be pro-life; it would just be pro-birth. Caring for the mother and child before and after birth is paramount. That is why I think pastoral support is so vital in the pro-life movement. The women who are considering abortion are considering it because of the difficult circumstance they are going through. Women who have experienced abortion and who are traumatized from their experience should be given all the help and healing they can get. There are single mothers who may need financial support or a shelter to live in during and after pregnancy. Women who are trapped in abusive relationships need the support they can get to get out of these relationships. Women who are considering abortion should be given access to support that will help her carry the child to term.

Alice Paul, a women’s rights activist, once said “abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women,” and I have to agree with her. The moment we, as a society, treat women as property instead of investing the time and energy to empower them, through emotional support and other means, we go down the same path that lead us to the necessity for the March for Life. These women will have no other option to turn to other than to have an abortion. Women deserve something better than abortion. They deserve to be respected. That is why it is important for us to know how to talk about abortion with someone who is considering it. It is why the pastoral arm of the pro-life movement is so vital. This is why every year Youth Protecting Youth fundraises for a bursary to be awarded to a single mother attending post-secondary. Pastoral work is not only life-saving, it is empowering. So, Washington’s March for Life took the words right out of my mouth: “Pro-life and pro-woman go hand-in-hand.”

If you or someone you know is considering an abortion check out our resources or email us at youthprotectingyouth@gmail.com and we can help you get the resources you need.

November 1-7 has been designated “National Down-Syndrome Awareness Week” by the Canadian Down Syndrome Society. This is an important event, a celebration of our common humanity in all its diversity and I would like to share some thoughts on this topic.

Whilst there are a plethora of reasons to talk about such an event and Down Syndrome (DS) in general; my main motives are simple. One might say “it is all in the family”: my mother, at the time Dr.. Peeters, was a geneticist/ pediatrician who worked closely with Dr. Jerome Lejeune (the geneticist who discovered that Down syndrome was due to trisomy of the 21st chromosome and who was an outspoken advocator of the pro-life position). A cousin works as in an advocacy group defending and assuring the best care for people with disabilities. I also have an inherent love for all those with Down Syndrome and greatly admire their individual strengths and abilities.

So it was natural that my first thoughts of this public awareness campaign were directed towards several children and young adults with DS that I have been privileged to know, and have friendships with, over the years. Their contagious smiles and steadfastness in friendships have warmed my heart on numerous occasions. I wish that more of us had the chance to know and love them. What is important is that you respect and love them because they are our fellow brothers and sisters and as each one of us is unique so is it with people with Down syndrome.

That is precisely the reason I was so glad to hear of this week dedicated to gaining awareness and, more fundamentally, promoting the culture of life. The Canadian Down Syndrome Society writes that their goals for this week are to raise awareness on how induvial with DS have their own unique abilities and are contributing to their communities, and to strengthen the national effort to ensure equitable opportunities for all.

Now this is something I am of course very happy to hear! Equality of opportunity for all Canadians regardless of genetics or any-other criteria! But wait a minute. What about those not how are not given the opportunity to be born? How about becoming aware of this. Roughly 92% of all pregnancies in Europe that involve babies with DS end in abortion. Approximately 67% is the equivalent statistic. This is the complete antithesis of equality.

Youth Protecting Youth has a reputation at UVic for showing photographs of victims of abortion. I’ve been asked many times (even though, during the time I’ve been UVic, our freedom of expression has been unconstitutionally limited and we haven’t used large, visible signs): why? Why show such bloody and horrible pictures? Why force people to look at something so painful?

Honestly, I hate those pictures.

I see them so often that I have to learn to deal with seeing such a sickening reality. I have to block off my emotions to a certain degree when I look at those photos. But there’s still many times when I pause, and look, and the full horror of what abortion is crashes into me. I have a vivid memory of holding one particular sign, showing an aborted fetus, and this unnamed child’s hands were splayed in the upper-right corner of the sign—right where my hand sat, holding it upright. I glanced down and saw my hand over the baby’s felt my heart squeeze into a little ball at the sight of that poor child who never got to hold anyone’s hands because theirs was ripped off.

So why do we insist on showing these photographs? Why don’t we silence abortion and hide it under the rug and just show pictures of smiling babies, instead?

I’ve done a lot of activism with abortion victim photography, both on and off campus, but I’ll always remember the first time I stood with those photos, doing a project called “Choice” Chain outside of a high school.

After a week of intensive training with the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform (who I was doing a co-op with), myself and two other interns launched right into activism—after all, the best way to learn is by doing. We clutched our signs tightly and instinctively stood close together. It was tempting, at times, to use the signs we held as a shield of sorts, as a way to separate ourselves from the chaotic miasma of pain and anger that we faced.

Soon we were moved apart by the knots of high school students that surrounded us. I remember being surrounded by at least twenty teens, most of them screaming at me, calling me names or just shooting out questions at rapid-fire speed. Talking with a crowd like this is a learned art, and I floundered slightly, trying to address everything they said.

I remember the boy who geared up to spit on me. I remember telling myself not to hide behind my sign, but to hold my head high; telling myself not to flinch. He was stopped only by the camera we keep for cases just like these—he knew he was about to do something wrong and didn’t want that on record.

The thing is, when I look back on that day now, all those things become background noise. What I remember most vividly is the girl who came up to me while the crowd was focused on another one of the interns and asked me to explain why I was there, in front of her school, showing such bloody and horrific pictures. She asked me to explain why I called myself pro-life. So I did: I explained that I believed in human rights, rights which apply not only to some humans, but to all humans, regardless of how old they are. She listened attentively and nodded, asking questions along the way, truly wanting to understand my position.

A few minutes into our conversation another angry person came by. This woman wasn’t a student but a parent who was affronted that her daughter might have to see what abortion does. She grabbed the girl’s arm and told her, interrupting me, “You know what you need to do? Just turn your back on these people. Don’t look at their signs and ignore them!”

The girl pulled her arm away and said, “Calm down, I’m just trying to talk with this girl.”

When the woman persisted, continually butting into our conversation with angry expletives, the girl sighed and walked around to the sidewalk behind me so that we could continue our conversation peacefully.

It was then that she shared her story with me. The CCBR had been to her school before, and she had seen the signs, and been deeply affected by them.

She told me—this young, beautiful, and bright girl who couldn’t have been older than fifteen or sixteen—that two years previous she’d had a son. She told me how she placed her son for adoption and that it was the hardest thing she had ever done. She told me how seeing our signs brought up all the pain of that separation to the surface, how she was one of the students who screamed at us, who went back inside her school and had an emotional breakdown.

The signs we held, photographs of the suffering of abortion victims, drew people to us and into conversations. The signs take hold of pain caused by a pro-abortion culture and draw it to the surface.

This young girl didn’t have one, and yet the reality was something she couldn’t ignore, something so pervasive in her school and the culture around her that she was deeply affected by it.

At the end of our conversation, we shook hands and she thanked me for coming to her school and for showing the photos. She thanked me for listening to her and for sharing the pro-life position with her. Finally, she told me that she agreed with me: that, even in the cases of young mothers like herself, abortion was never the right response to a difficult situation.

In the end, that’s why we show these photos. The only voice that these children have is the evidence of what was done to them—the brutal depictions of lives ended far too soon, ripped or suctioned to pieces. And every time that evidence is bared, people react strongly—and people change. Countless lives have been saved and countless hearts and minds have been irreversibly affected when they came to understand the truth of abortion.

It’s a hard truth to face. I know this just as well as anyone. I knew it when I spoke to that girl, and I knew it when my hand cupped that of an innocent child’s, wishing what I held was living and well. And I know that if we don’t do something to stop it, more and more children—three hundred every single day in Canada alone—will end up dismembered, decapitated, and disemboweled, their human rights thrown in the trash along with their broken bodies.